Method of Teaching English Literature

Author(s): Charlton M. Lewis

Source: The School Review, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Mar., 1903), pp. 187-199
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1075357
Accessed: 04-02-2019 16:09 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and
extend access to The School Review

This content downloaded from 87.2.214.52 on Mon, 04 Feb 2019 16:09:12 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 METHOD OF TEACHING ENGLISH LITERATURE.'

I REGARD the teaching of English literature an

of spelling, grammar, and rhetoric as two differ
It is in many respects unfortunate that both
practiced by a single teacher, or a single depa
best teacher of literature may be the worst te
grammar, and rhetoric; but, as our curriculum
ordained, we have to face the situation as best we can. Let us
frankly recognize, however, that we are dealing with two widely
different sets of subjects; that the methods that succeed in the
teaching of spelling and grammar may fail utterly with litera-
ture; and that experience gained in one branch cannot be an
infallible guide in the other.
My own experience has been almost wholly in the teaching
of literature, and methods of elementary instruction in that
branch will be the subject of this paper. I wish, however, by
way of preface, and in order to avoid a possible misunderstand-
ing, to state briefly an opinion concerning both branches.
There is much complaint against the manner in which kinder-
garten ideas have invaded secondary schools and colleges. I
hear it said that we do not discipline our scholars enough; and
that that is why they are growing up illiterate. Now, my
opinion is that, in so far as this complaint relates to our teaching
of spelling, grammar, and rhetoric, it is not without foundation;
I believe that in those subjects some of us do trust too much to
Kindergarten methods-to literary methods; and I am glad to
see a revival of the good old-fashioned discipline. On the other
hand, in the teaching of English literature I think the idea of
discipline is already carried rather too far, and that our schools
and colleges would do better if they employed less of what is
commonly called discipline than they actually do. In this paper
I propose to defend what to many will seem altogether too lax a
'A paper read before the New England Association of Teachers of English,
November I5, 1902.
I87

This content downloaded from 87.2.214.52 on Mon, 04 Feb 2019 16:09:12 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
I88 THE SCHOOL REVIEW

method; but I wish it distinctly understood tha

only to the teaching of literature, and that, if I w
spelling, grammar, or rhetoric, I should speak ver
The first problem that caused me much trou
experience was as to the degree of minute thoroug
in reading. The.average student has a very sm
and, of course, we want him to extend it. S
teaching Macbeth. Your first lesson brings y
Graymalkin, kerns, gallowglasses, Bellona's br
score or more of other expressions that your s
know unless he looks them up; and, of course,
them up unless you make him-that is, unless y
of your time to quizzing the class upon partic
insist upon having everything explained.
Of course, the objection to such a plan is the
toil involved. Our average student finds it a pos
task, and our object is to make literature attr
other hand, if you do not make him look up th
not know, will he know Shakespeare at all ? Ho
exquisite beauty of Romeo, how much of the su
is wholly lost upon the student who has not s
peare's language. For every difficulty that you
silence, you will inevitably feel a sting of conscien
every student with whom you practice the laxer m
have moments of feeling yourself a criminal.
Nevertheless, after some years of varied experim
much reflection, I have long since abandoned the s
and for the last three or four years I have been
burdens of my conscience about three hund
annum. It is true that I feel, after teaching Ham
Othello, that none of my students really know Sh
then, who does ? They cannot know him excep
the question for the teacher to decide is: W
have satisfied myself that, so far as my own yo
are concerned, they will know less about him if th
to read him in what I should call a thorough mann
are let off more easily. In the former case, the av

This content downloaded from 87.2.214.52 on Mon, 04 Feb 2019 16:09:12 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 METHOD OF TEA CIING ENGLISH LITERA TURE I89

assuredly not like him; and the knowledge of

possessed by anybody who does not like him mus
be of small value.

This seems but a superficial argument; but there is a deepe

principle underlying it. Let us look at the question in anothe
way. Let us suppose that our chief interest is merely to increase
the student's vocabulary. Even so, I think it might be plausibl
urged that the best way to accomplish this is not by making him
study words. He will enrich his vocabulary more by wide rea
ing than by thorough reading. Consider how we ourselves ha
learned the language. I have no idea how large my effective
vocabulary is, but I am certain that not more than I per cent. of
it consists of words that I have looked up. And, moreover, i
a matter of this kind, it will not do to count merely the number
of words that we know. The quality of our knowledge is mor
important to us than the quantity. From dictionaries and text
books I have learned such words as "sclerosis," "kilogram
"epistemological," " isogeotherm," " dicotyledinous." A frien
of mine has recently acquired the word " radiomicrometer," and
he has three times in the last fortnight introduced it casuall
into conversation about the weather, with excellent effect. Such
words as these are showy things to wear on the outside, but the
part of our vocabulary that furnishes the really vital garment for
our thought is the integument that grows by nature. Compare
with the words that I have just listed such words as "father,"
"mother." They afford an extreme example, for they suggest
ideas that are more vitally dear to us than all the radiomicrome-
ters in the world; but in a lower degree I think all the words
that we have unconsciously absorbed, either from the speech of
others or from our own discursive reading, are likewise more
intimately ours than those we have exhumed by a deliberate
effort from dictionaries.

I myself, therefore, have discontinued that method of teach-

ing English, because it seemed to me a misguided attempt to
find a short-cut to culture. Real culture is not to be attained
by such means; and the effort does more harm than good by
turning the study of literature into an unprofitable linguistic dis-

This content downloaded from 87.2.214.52 on Mon, 04 Feb 2019 16:09:12 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Igo 7HE SCHOOL REVIEW

cipline. Of course, some linguistic difficulties mus

Wherever a difficult passage is of vital importanc
tainly not ignore it altogether. But I want to be
bear notion that in teaching beginners we mu
literature with a fine-tooth comb.

A second problem of similar nature is presented by the liter-

ary and historical allusions that our students will all the time be
encountering. Shall we compel boys to look them up? I think
not. Allusions are not made to be looked up-unless possibly
they were made for that purpose by Robert Browning. It is true,
of course, that there is often a rare pleasure to be won from a
graceful allusion whose significance we understand; and it is
equally true that we lose almost all the pleasure if we do not
understand the significance; but if the average beginner is com-
pelled to look it up, I think he loses more than he gains. For a
specific illustration, let me take one of Wordsworth's sonnets on
"Personal Talk"-the one with the allusions to Una and Des-

demona. This sonnet is a favorite with many readers of

worth; it is a favorite, notwithstanding the somewhat sen
tone of its moralizing, just because of those two allusion
end. After mentioning other themes that he is always
talk about, Wordsworth adds, by way of conclusion:
Two shall be named, pre-eminently dear,-
The gentle lady married to the Moor;
And heavenly Una with her milk-white lamb.

Here, of course, our reminiscent sympathy with bot

heroines enables us to feel in an instant the point; for
recalls a whole world of associations, pities, loves; the
applied to each pleases our asthetic sense and flatters our c
judgment, and we are fully in sympathy with the poet. Bu
pose we had never read either Othlello or The Faerie Qu
then we looked up our two allusions, we should learn so
like this:

Desdemona: heroine of Othello, by William Shakespeare, married to the

hero, a Moor, and by him cruelly murdered out of causeless jealousy. A pop-
ular heroine of the English stage.
Una . personifies truth in Edmund Spenser's unfinished poem, The Faerie

This content downloaded from 87.2.214.52 on Mon, 04 Feb 2019 16:09:12 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 METHOD OF TEA CHING ENGLISH LITERATURE I9I

Queene. Her heavenly humility was aptly symbolized by a

associated with her in Book I, Canto I, stanza 4,

Evidently we do not get at the soul of an allusion thus. The

only right way to get at the soul of it is by being previously
familiar with its subject. If we cannot get at its soul, I have
reluctantly decided, as a result of my personal experience, not
to try to get at it at all. For the purposes of the beginner's study
of literature, I have come to the conclusion that knowledge
obtained from books of reference is, in general, not knowledge.
For the purposes of aesthetic culture the average man must be
content to roam at large over the field, not burrow into it; he is
after light and color, not roots and fossils. The time saved from
looking up allusions in Wordsworth can be more profitably spent
in reading The Faerie Queene and Othello themselves, or whatever
else is best suited to the student's age and temper, and thereby
stimulating the pleasure in literature which closer researches are
too likely to deaden.
But my paper threatens to end with a recommendation not to
teach English at all; for if we are not to study either a poet's
language or the things that he is writing about, what, you will say,
is left that we are to study? Nevertheless, before answering
such a query, I purpose defending yet a third exclusion. In my
own experience, after I had excluded the detailed study of lan-
guage and the study of the author's meaning from extraneous
sources, I experimented with divers devices for making the value
of literature more apparent to young minds, and by slow degrees
I eliminated from the study what many will properly regard as one
of the most vital features of all literature. I mean the asthetic
study of artistic details. I found it very hard to give to my stu-
dents any adequate appreciation of felicities of phrase. Suppose,
for instance, you are reading The Ancient Mariner with a youthful
class. You come to this passage:
Sometimes all little birds that are,
How they seemed to fill the sea and air
With their sweet jargoning!

You yourself are sensible of a most exquisite beauty in these

lines. You ask one of your pupils what he thinks of Coleridge's

This content downloaded from 87.2.214.52 on Mon, 04 Feb 2019 16:09:12 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
I92 THE SCHOOL REVIEW

use of that word "jargoning," and he will pro

don't know: it seems to me sort of foolish." Now, if he does
take this view of the passage, you really have no just cause of
quarrel with him. Indeed, I am not sure that I would not rather
have a healthy youth of sixteen or eighteen feel just that way
about it, for in the normal order of intellectual development the
asthetic sense ought not to come first. But the question for the
teacher is: What am I to do about it!

Well, of course, something can be done, but there are reason

why we cannot hope to do much. In the first place, it is
only the boy's aesthetic sense that is as yet rudimentary;
have already said, his vocabulary is in the same condition.
must be widely familiar with the prose uses of words before o
can adequately appreciate their poetic uses. The average
is confronted here by the same difficulty that confronts us a
the reading of French or even Italian poetry. I myself
utterly incompetent to pronounce a critical judgment upon
poetic style of Heredia or Petrarch. I may look up ever
unfamiliar word in my dictionaries, and make myself abso
master of the specific sense of every passage; but the inner su
tleties of the poet's thought will be sure to escape me, beca
have not used his language all my life. Just so it is with
average American youth. You can successfully expound to h
those beauties of poetic style that do not transcend either
asthetic sense or his intimacy with the English vocabulary,
unless you have tact enough to restrain yourself within th
rather narrow limits, you will certainly be losing your labor.
not try to plant roses in a soil where roses will not grow.
a fundamental principle of gardening, I take it, to cultivate on
such soils as are able of being cultivated.
But, besides the danger of wasting your energies, ther
another specific danger here which is far more serious. You
in danger of making your pupil think of literature as somethi
apart from himself. That, indeed, is what he already thin
The great majority of young men who come to Yale Colle
think of poetry somewhat as many older men think of Wa
or Botticelli; it is an occult delight for the strange few wh

This content downloaded from 87.2.214.52 on Mon, 04 Feb 2019 16:09:12 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 METHOD OF TEACHING ENGLISH LITERATURE I93

affect an interest in such things, but something

ken of the common-sense mind. I think it of
tance to eradicate this impression; but if you spe
trying to make your pupil see things that are
of his vision, you fix the blight upon him for
of this, I am sorry to say, is done in some col
some of the secondary schools-done, of cours
intentions, but with deplorable results. It is don
reading which they are too young to appreciate,
to force them to appreciate it. I am not so
throw over this means of culture altogether; but
that the teacher should be very cautious. He
impressing upon the boy that there is a lot in li
boy cannot see there, and does not want to s
upon beauties of poetic diction just because t
sure, first, that your seed will drop into fertile s
What, then, is the teacher to do? The fund
ples that ought to guide him, and determine
(I think) been indicated already. We are no
teach the student what he already knows, or wh
well learn himself; but, on the other hand, a
must not try to teach him things that he cannot
aid. We are not to try to show him all that ther
what we are to do is to convince him that there is a great deal
in literaturefor him. The best teacher of literature is he who
does this best; and the very first requisite for a successful
teacher is that sympathy with various classes of minds and vari-
ous stages of mental development, that knowledge of other peo-
ple's point of view, that almost unlearnable tact, which enables
one to see literature as the youth sees it. The teacher ought,
of course, to see for himself all that there is there; but it is
more important that he should see this, not only with his own
eyes, but also with those of his pupil-including the blind spot.
In proceeding now from generalities to particulars, I realize
that I am reaching the part of my paper where it is most unsafe
to be dogmatic. There are no rules of universal application.
The methods that work with one teacher will not work with

This content downloaded from 87.2.214.52 on Mon, 04 Feb 2019 16:09:12 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
I94 THE SCHOOL REVIEW

another. If we tried to steer each other, we should be sure of

general shipwreck. I intend merely to mention, for illustration,
some of the themes which my own experience has seemed to
indicate as best for my own class-room discussion.
In selecting details for consideration with my classes, it has
often been my practice to try to remember what I myself was
interested in at their age. It is somewhat hard to remember,
for our own past states of mind are almost as foreign to us as the
present ones of the younger generation; but some things are so
salient that they cannot be missed. I remember, for one thing,
that even at the age of thirteen or fourteen I was much inter-
ested in the discussion of personal character. It happened that
among the particular knot of schoolboys with whom I was most
intimate a favorite pastime was the analysis of the minds of our-
selves and of one another. We made our analyses, naturally, in
a very untechnical way, and we proceeded upon a very narrow
knowledge of the general chemistry of mind; but the feeling
that led us to discuss such matters at all was a genuine intellec-
tual interest; and, as I remember it, it was an interest that was
capable of being awakened in all sorts and conditions of boys.
Experiment has seemed to show me-and I think almost
every teacher of literature has had the same experience-that
it is possible to interest more young students in the study of
character than in almost any other study. When they are read-
ing Shakespeare they can be made to understand and discrim-
inate very delicate shadings. The reason is obvious: it is that
all traits of human character are in ourselves. The titanic

heroism of Lear and even the malignancy of Iago are in y

in embryo. Or, if you are studying, not Shakespeare,
non-dramatic author, you find that the qualities of the p
self are somewhere within your own consciousness. T
vision of Milton, the saeva indignatio of Swift, the v
benevolence of Coleridge, are all your own-traits that
haps dormant and invisible to your ordinary introspec
clear enough when they are brought into focus under
of genius. No wonder, then, that the study of our own p
as they are manifested in others, and concentrated by th

This content downloaded from 87.2.214.52 on Mon, 04 Feb 2019 16:09:12 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 METHOD OF TEACHING ENGLISH LITERATURE I95

art, is to most of us a study of unfailing inte

teacher a resource that he can always count on,
But the study of character, as revealed in lit
merely one of the things that can be taught su
one of the most vital things in literature-one
best worth teaching; and, above all, it brings lit
the student and shows him in a convincing way th
of literature to life, and especially to his own l
him of the pernicious prejudice that literature is a
for the initiated only.
A second kind of topics that have seemed to
adapted for instruction in our department have to
problems. I should have been skeptical as to this
experience. A boy's knowledge of the world
within the limitations of his knowledge his mo
moral judgments are as keen as a man's-perh
have asked a class of sophomores whether Haml
his uncle ; whether he was really to blame for hes
and I have received in reply more sane commo
have found in'all the commentators, and conse
light on the vexed old question of Hamlet's irre
Now, English literature, above all other mode
is charged full with modern ideas. Some of ou
poetry according to the quantity and solidity o
structure; or at least they profess to do so. I m
much confidence in the attempt to test poetry by
stone as that; but certainly the moral ideas in o
constitute a very great part of its value, and if w
reinforce the appeal that these ideas make to o
may feel sure that we are doing them a very grea
I do not mean to recommend turning the cla
Sunday school. Our students do not want us to
But suppose they are reading Macbeth. They a
the extent to which the hero is influenced by mo
by motives of soldierly honor, by motives of conj
They are perfectly capable of appreciating the dif
sequel, between self-pity and self-reproach, as
remorse.

This content downloaded from 87.2.214.52 on Mon, 04 Feb 2019 16:09:12 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
I96 7HE SCHOOL REVIEW

Or suppose we are reading Paradise Lost. Mil

of his way to make the sin of Adam and Eve se
as unimportant as possible, and to represent t
ignorant of the meaning of the word " death," wit
vaguely threatened if they disobey; Milton justi
God by making them seem preposterously trivi
but why does he do so? The student can be m
understand the Puritan idea of religion-the Mil
in ethics utilitarianism is nothing, and obedien
God is everything. In like manner most of ou
sciously or unconsciously imbued with a system
may be either religious or aesthetic or utilitarian;
them your student can generally be made, not
stand and discriminate, in an elementary way
especially) to feel that on this side, too, literature
in it for him.
But I am not going over the whole field of
available for discussion. In general, anything th
author's view of life, and his attitude toward lif
to impress the student. Suppose you are read
Keats-if I may be pardoned the enormity of n
in the same breath; and suppose you suggest
between Pope's Belinda and Keat's Madeline. If
direct his examination of the two, he can see that one is a
cynic's scoff and the other a poet's dream, but that there are
ideals of womanhood that are more complimentary to the fair
sex-and therefore, of course, more, just-than either. He
cannot see all the wit-of the one, nor all the beauty of the other;
you will make a mistake if you try to make him; but he can see
the truth and untruth of both. And so in almost any work of
the imagination the student can be made to discover some view
of life that is new to him, perhaps a view that possesses a very
high degree of interest. Is the view clear-sighted and true?
Is it over-optimistic or over-pessimistic? Since the author's
time, have we advanced or degenerated? If the author is a
modern, is he in line with contemporary tendencies, and with
our own instinctive feeling? Milton was intolerant, sometimes

This content downloaded from 87.2.214.52 on Mon, 04 Feb 2019 16:09:12 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 METHOD OF TEACHING ENGLISH LITERATURE I97

crabbed and fanatical; we have left him very fa

what have we lost in the journey? Milton had a b
of paradise; but how would you like to live ther
would not suit you, whose fault is it? Milton se
a strangely confused notion as to the nature of t
he calls hell, and as to the effect of hell-fire up
angels; is it perhaps because in Milton's thought o
ishment there was something much worse than
flames?

And so forth and so forth. But in suggesting such methods

of work as these, I do not mean to recommend any particular
topics as worthy of anything like exclusive attention. Other
topics, out of which I myself have never been able to make very
much, are perhaps the very ones that another teacher would
find best worthy of study. In Shakespeare, for instance, I know
that many teachers are able to create an absorbing interest in
the study of plot-construction, of poetic justice, of dramatic
perspective, of the unities, and a multitude of other topics ta
which I have unfortunately never been able to do even scant
justice. I do not, therefore, in laying so much emphasis upon
my own experience, presume to recommend any of my particu-
lar methods to anybody else. I mean only to obviate the
natural objection that such general methods have no disciplinary
value. In the narrower sense, indeed, they are not disciplinary.
Discipline of the stricter sort must undoubtedly be enforced
upon even the youngest pupils, in order that they may acquire
the rudiments of spelling, grammar, and rhetoric; and a strict
discipline is, of course, what we impose upon ourselves, and
upon our more advanced students, because our stomachs will not
reject the strongest medicines; but I hope to see that sort of
discipline kept as far apart from the beginner's study of pure
literature "as from the center thrice to the utmost pole."
But in the truest sense the kind of treatment that I have

been recommending is discipline. It disciplines not all on

mental faculties, to be sure, but some of the highest facultie
the intellect and the character. And we must always bea
mind, if it is our lot to be charged with the instruction o

This content downloaded from 87.2.214.52 on Mon, 04 Feb 2019 16:09:12 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
I98 THE SCHOOL REVIEW

but the most advanced students, that we are c

one of the many departments of instruction in
schooled. They are studying mathematics an
well as English literature. We may not altogeth
the strict discipline to other departments of study,
wiser if we do. Suppose-to put an extreme ex
boy's teacher in English devotes himself chiefly
habits of methodical exactness, and his teacher in algebra
devotes himself chiefly to cultivating the poetical emotions.
The supposition is absurd, but it makes clear, I think, the func-
tions of each department. We must make each study do for
the boy the service that it is best fitted to do. We, in the Eng-
lish department, shall best break down his resistance to the
introduction of culture and knowledge, if we attack him on
those sides of his nature where his resistance is weakest. The

particular kind of appeal that our teaching can best mak

the boy is a kind of appeal that can be made on no othe
ject as well; and we are not doing our duty if we reje
responsibility.
Such, in brief, are my views as to how literature shou
taught to beginners. Our animating purpose is to make
feel attracted to better literature; to make them feel that there
is something in it for them; and our method, in general, should
be by introducing them to modes of thought and habits of
reading that are new to them, but not beyond them, and not
repellant. If the student is not yet ready for Milton, we will
not try Milton; we will forget that such a person as Milton ever
existed, and will tempt him with the Idylls of the King, or The
Vicar of Wakefield, or even Alice in Wonderland; we will make
sure, however, of this, that we are giving him something that is
new to him, but at the same time not indigestible.
I am well aware of some serious objections to my idea. One
is afforded by the college-entrance examinations. Ah, to be
sure, there is that English B staring me in the face! For the
present I suppose we cannot help ourselves; we shall have to do
our unhappy duty with Burke, Milton, Macaulay, and Macbeth,
working in the old-fashioned way with abstracts, annotations,

This content downloaded from 87.2.214.52 on Mon, 04 Feb 2019 16:09:12 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 METHOD OF TEACH?ING ENGLISH LITTERA TURE I99

tabulations, and all the rest of the regular disciplina

But let us not suppose that in doing this we are t
ture; we are teaching spelling, grammar, and rhetor
adapting our noble classics to the purposes of te
those branches. But it is to be supposed that m
schools will do some intelligent work in English
side of the entrance requirements, where their teac
untrammeled; and for my part, I have hope that
the entrance requirements themselves may be alle
Another serious objection to the methods I pr
they are vastly harder for the teacher than the
discipline. I can spend a week preparing to make
a sympathetic interest in a short poem; but I can
learn what its words mean without any preparation at all.
Every teacher knows that this is true. The only answer to it-
but I think it a sufficient answer-is this: that if that kind of

work interests us, we shall be perfectly willing to do it; and i

does not interest us, we ought not to be teaching English l
ture.
CHARLTON M. LEWIS.
YALE UNIVERSITY.

This content downloaded from 87.2.214.52 on Mon, 04 Feb 2019 16:09:12 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms